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What are the implications for society if aggression is found to be caused…
What are the implications for society if aggression is found to be caused by nature not nurture?
Characteristics associated with aggression
Risk taking
Gossiping
Name calling
Physical violence
Facts and figures
1.28 million deaths due to violence
842,000 due to suicide
405,000 due to homicide
31,000 due to war
Real-life cases
Animals
Defending territories
Competing for dominance or mates
Organised intraspecies violence, e.g. chimpanzees
Violence towards mate or offspring, e.g. preying mantis.
Humans
Competing for mates or job opportunities
War and homicide
Suicide
Biological causes of aggression
Limbic system, especially the amygdala that regulates aggression and emotions, and the pre-frontal cortex.
Evolutionary: the strong male gene is favoured when competing for dominance or mates, or in offspring.
High testosterone levels leads to aggression
Environmental causes of aggression
Social pressures such as poverty or oppression.
Realistic Conflict Theory suggests competition for resources = violence. May be why people in the Stone Age were so violent as could be a lack of resources or large amount of competitors.
Agency theory: instructions from authority
Social Identity Theory: make a more favoured social/personal identity.
Social Learning Theory, e.g. Bandura's Bobo dolls: seeing aggressive role model and replicating behaviour.
Freud's life and death principles
Aggression caused by nurture
Bandura's Bobo Doll experiments
Media desensitisation to violence
Tajfel (1979) - existence of another group leads to hostility
Robbers Cave 1961
Research evidence: aggression is caused by nature
Violent cave paintings and brutal murder at Kenya Rift Valley
Killer ape theory - evolved because were more violent
MAOAL gene - fight or flight response in mice (Cases, 1995). Risk taking/assessment of critical situations.
Frydman et al (2010) 83 young men, $25 in 140 games. More likely to take risk when could gain (warrior gene).
Implications for society
Strategies such as cleaning cities or creating more jobs would not remove all violence.
Superordinate goals
Need to change the way people think rather than their surroundings.
Could do this through CBT so that they recognise the thinking process and anything that does not conform to this.